I took a train on the Abukuma Kyuko train line north to Date City. (pronounced Dah-tay)

Leaving Fukushima City….view from the train (above)

I got off at Date City’s Ooizumi Station.

I first heard about this magnificent playground back when my son was in preschool. He came home from preschool and he told me that he went down a really long slide. So I asked his teachers where they went, and they told me how to get to this park. After that, I took my son here.

The slide is REALLY long. (Japan loves long slides.)

In my opinion, these long slides are less fun than they look. The long slides have rollers that roll you down and after seven minutes of that (with a three-year-old on your lap) your butt starts to burn. I’ve seen some people sit on newspapers to avoid that slow burn.

The teeny tiny kiddy section…The theme is fruits.

Why fruits?

Fukushima Prefecture is famous for its fruit orchards.

See the fruit theme?

A grape picnic table.

Like all parks in Fukushima Prefecture nowadays, this park has has a machine which detects the amount of radiation that hits the panels. .172 microsieverts. It’s the same as the amount of radiation detected in a lot of places around the world, and considered to be a safe amount.